Nine public Bitcoin miners poured $5.11 billion into AI and high-performance-computing infrastructure in the first half of 2026 but generated just $341.2 million from it, a roughly 15-to-1 gap between spending and revenue. The pivot is accelerating even as Bitcoin itself climbs back above $72,000.
Nine comparable Bitcoin miners spent $5.11 billion on capital assets during the first half of 2026 while generating just $341.2 million in directly reported AI and HPC revenue, according to BlocksBridge Consulting's Miner Weekly newsletter. That works out to roughly a 15-to-1 capex-to-revenue ratio.
Across the wider sector, a group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies spent a combined $30.7 billion on capital assets in their latest 2026 reporting periods, already 42.6% more than the $21.53 billion spent throughout all of 2025. BlocksBridge calculated the figures from cash purchases and allocations to hardware, property, equipment and other productive assets, after accounting for proceeds and refunds from asset sales.
Revenue is catching up, slowly
The gap is narrowing even if it remains wide. The nine miners generated $205.8 million from AI and HPC in the second quarter alone, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer among the companies reporting gains. Some of these companies now earn more from renting compute to AI workloads than from mining Bitcoin, and cumulative AI and HPC contracts across the public mining sector now exceed $70 billion, with deal structures often spanning 12 to 20 years.
Miners are making the shift because the two businesses share the same core requirements: heavy electricity draw, industrial-scale cooling, and remote sites where land and power are cheap. Miners with secured HPC contracts now trade at roughly 12.3 times enterprise value, compared with 5.9 times for Bitcoin-only operators.
Bitcoin's rally offers some relief
It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin's latest price recovery will ease pressure on miners still running sizable mining operations. Bitcoin has surged more than 13% this week and climbed back above $72,000 after the US Treasury said it would at least double the maximum size of its long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation, a move aimed at improving liquidity in the Treasury market.
In a further sign of the shift, CoinShares this week renamed its mining-sector tracking fund the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining and Digital Power ETF (WGMI). The fund, which holds $222.4 million in assets under management, now spans 29 holdings across bitcoin miners, data-center operators, AI semiconductors, power generation and HPC companies.
Sources: Cointelegraph.com News, Crypto Briefing
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
